Rochester City Manager Daniel Fitzpatrick posts a bulletin at the city’s Public Library alerting employees and residents to the city’s new ethics policies and ethics helpline. (Courtesy photo)

ROCHESTER — A new hot line has been established for reporting unethical behavior by city employees and volunteers.

The hot line — which is part of the Rochester’s new ethics and compliance program — is a means to anonymously report complains of fraud, waste, or other unethical or illegal activity by those representing the city.

“You hear lots of times that people don’t want to turn in an employee because they don’t want to get them in trouble,” said City Manager Daniel Fitzpatrick. “But it creates a great deal of stress, and we’re hoping to make the workplace environment a little more safe.”

According to Fitzpatrick, ethics and compliance programs, such as the one in Rochester, are more common in the private sector, but are rarely implemented in municipalities.

The program comes with an official code of ethics, which Fitzpatrick has developed over the past several months, at the request of the mayor and the City Council.

He said that after conducting research, he was unable to find any other city in New Hampshire to have a program such as the one implemented this month.

Fitzpatrick, who is now also the chief ethics and compliance officer for the city, noted he has no reason to believe city employees are currently doing anything wrong. However, he said city residents will likely gain more confidence with the new policies, because “we are doing things in a more open and honest way.”

The new program applies to all city employees except the Police Department, which already has a code of ethics.

The new ethics standards address issues such as handling of confidential information; acceptance of gifts; and holding investments that conflict with official duties.

Fitzpatrick said that while some of the policies have already been in place they had not been formalized or sent to all employees.

“You can’t expect people to comply with the rules if you don’t know what the rules are,” he said.

Fitzpatrick said that after a complaint is made to the anonymous ethics hot line, he and the Ethics and the Compliance Committee will review each complaint, and decide on appropriate disciplinary action on a case-by-case basis.

The committee is composed of the Mayor T.J. Jean, Deputy Mayor Ray Varney, as well as two deputy city managers — Blaine Cox and Karen Pollard.

According to Jean, the ethics program “is something that the corporate community has been developing for a while, but for the most part, municipalities have been behind the times.”

Fitzpatrick confirmed that formal ethics and compliance standards are relatively new, even when it comes to the private sector. He said that generally, private businesses began to incorporate such standards about 15 years ago.

Among municipalities, “It’s a brand new field,” he said.

“I am proud that Rochester is on the forefront on this,” said Jean. “It really serves as a protection for city employees, making sure that everyone is acting to the highest standards, and it also protects the interests of the city’s residents.”

Fitzpatrick said that coming up with the ethics standards for city employees has been a challenge, because of limited resources available for how municipalities can develop the policies. He said he only knows of one other city in the country — Austin, Texas — that has established a similar program.

As part of his work, Fitzpatrick received training from the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics, and wrote the city’s ethics and compliance program manual based on that training, adapting programs used by major corporations.

“The challenge was taking a program developed for companies with thousands of employees and adapting it for a city with 250,” said Fitzpatrick.

Notices of the new ethics program were sent to all city employees and vendors earlier this month. Fitzpatrick noted that as part of the announcement of the new program, vendors were notified that the ethics program does not allow acceptance of gifts by city employees, when those gifts are used to influence them in performance of their duties, or to reward an action on an employee’s part.

Currently, it is the responsibility of city representatives to immediately report ethics violations to the helpline. All representatives are guaranteed city, state and federal whistle-blower protection. Employees seeking to report a possible instance of wrongdoing can do so anonymously, by phone at 509-1905 or email at Compliance@RochesterNH.net.